


New Dreams

by LadyNorbert



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Jaws of Hakkon DLC, Lost Love, Slow Romance, second love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-03 17:24:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12752814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNorbert/pseuds/LadyNorbert
Summary: After the First and Second Inquisitors meet, Ameridan fully expects to die and fade away. Instead, he survives, and though his love for Telana will never die, the new Thedas which faces him has not left him all alone.





	New Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Theneras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theneras/gifts).



> Many thanks to sunspot (unavoidedcrisis) for the beta reading! Here's a treat!

* * *

 

Ameridan raised his head, meeting her eyes. The dream was broken, the clouds lifted. He was so _tired_ , but it didn’t matter because she was here. The waiting was over. How long had it been?

_Telana._

He blinked slowly, trying to clear the fog of unsleep from his brain. He had not slept, had not wavered, had kept Hakkon Wintersbreath at bay while Telana went for help. Now she had returned to him.

Hadn’t she?

He blinked again.

“Inquisitor,” she breathed.

No - he could see it now. The hair color was wrong, the eyes were wrong, the vallaslin was not her own. This was not his Dreamer. This was his _replacement._

“Inquisitor,” he said aloud.

* * *

Eight hundred years.

He and the infernal dragon had been trapped for eight hundred years.

Her face and voice were full of pity, and of an exhausted sort of strength he understood too well; this was one of the People who had seen too much, endured too much, battled too much. It must be so, for the title of Inquisitor would not have been handed to one who knew nothing of the weight of battle. She, perhaps better than anyone else, would understand his burden.

And the Creators and the Maker all must be praised for that, because she would have to bear it.

Telana seemed to call to him from her place at the Maker’s side. He was ready; he was eager, in a way, to fade into nothingness. His life was long over. He had been dead for eight hundred years, and he hadn’t even known it. Let Falon'Din carry him to the Golden City. He bade this strange Inquisitor good fortune, and closed his eyes.

* * *

“Lord Ameridan.”

He opened his eyes, and tried to focus on the two faces peering at him. One was human, with a strange floppy hat and an inquisitive face; the other was dwarven, freckled and sun-kissed and full of a sort of gentle weariness.

“Where am I?” he wanted to know. This was not the Maker’s side; this was not the Beyond; this felt too real.

“You’re in one of the Inquisition camps in the Frostback Basin,” said the dwarf, helpfully. “My name is Scout Harding. Inquisitor Lavellan asked us to bring you back here while she and her friends dealt with the dragon.”

“Bring me back here? But I - I died.”

“It probably seemed that way,” said the human. “Forgive me - Professor Bram Kenric of the University of Orlais, at your service. I’ve been studying you and trying to learn what became of you for a long time, and the Inquisitor and her allies have been here assisting me. I certainly never expected to meet you in person.” He had a rich accent which Ameridan couldn’t place; it was strangely pleasant to hear him speak.

They tried to explain it to him, but he didn’t hear it all. He didn’t care enough to listen closely. He had been denied respite, denied obscurity, denied his love. Again.

When they stopped talking, he asked only one question. “Did she defeat Hakkon?”

“She did,” Scout Harding assured him. “Telana helped her, you know. She went to the island where Telana died… and the spirit who remained gifted her with an ability that helped her beat Hakkon. It let her deflect anything the dragon spit at her.”

“Oh - the aegis.” Ameridan nodded slightly. “Telana’s aegis. It was a spell of her own making, something she discovered in one of her dreams.” The thought buoyed him a little. _If the Inquisitor has Telana’s aegis, then in a way, Telana still lives._ It was a small comfort.

* * *

The Inquisitor’s injuries were not severe, Ameridan was pleased to learn. Something inside him twisted when he finally learned her name. She was not his Telana - but her name was _Ellana_ , and the similarity haunted him.

She returned to the same camp where he was housed, and came often to sit at his bedside. Elves, he realized, had changed a bit in eight hundred years; her stature was leaner than his own, slighter. There was a richness to the color of her hair and her eyes; the brown hair was dark, like aging bark on a tree, while the eyes were green and vivid against her golden-brown skin, her face emblazoned with the simple vallaslin of Ghilan’nain.

 _So different from you, my love_ , he thought. Telana had been fair and delicate, with hair like sunlight and eyes of darkest blue, her face adorned with Dirthamen’s vallaslin just as his was. Nor was Ellana a mage; she was a hunter, with an ironbark longbow within reach at every waking moment.

She showed him her hand, with its strange crack that still glistened with otherworldly green light, and explained how it happened - how the burden of Inquisitor had fallen to her.

“It was not so different for me,” he said. “Drakon was convinced that I, too, was the only one who could save the world.”

Ellana smiled. “He believed in you.”

“Too much. And yet... was he wrong? Look at what became of our People because I wasn’t there. My place was at his side, to lead our People against the darkspawn. Yet you tell me even now, eight Ages later, Thedas still has not come to realize that they are a true enemy against which we must all stand united.”

“It’s a lesson which everyone seems to learn when a Blight is unleashed, and then they forget it all over again.” She shrugged. “We learned it again recently with the rise of Corypheus.”

“You had greater success than I.” Ameridan found himself actually chuckling slightly. “You did your job and mine.”

“I couldn’t have done it alone. I certainly couldn’t have finished your work had you not held the line for so long.”

* * *

The weight of hundreds of years was gradually leaching out of Ameridan’s bones and into the mattress beneath him. Every day he was able to get up and walk around for longer periods; when the weather permitted, he even went outside of his cabin.

He had not seen the sun in such a long time. Thedas had changed so much in eight hundred years, but the sun, at least, was still the sun.

“I wonder,” he said one afternoon, “that we can understand each other.”

“How do you mean?” asked Ellana.

“After so long, I can tell the language has evolved,” he said. “You do not speak the way people spoke when I was...” He paused. “I was going to say _alive_ , but I suppose I still am. In my previous lifetime, then. Your speech patterns are different, your colloquialisms are different, and your accent is not like mine. Yet I have no difficulty understanding what you say. And when I speak to you, the words that are coming out of my mouth - I know they sound differently out loud than they do in my head.”

“Perhaps it’s a spell,” she suggested. “One that you’ve cast without knowing it. Or perhaps it’s some ancient Elvhen magic that still lingers within our blood.”

 _Perhaps it’s Telana,_ he thought, but did not say. _You have her aegis. What else did she give you without you knowing?_

* * *

The Inquisition was preparing to leave the Basin.

Ameridan had been resting for three weeks, and the camps were being struck. Their work here was done; they would encroach upon the Avvar no longer. Only the base camp would remain, a sort of foothold for the organization in the area, where they might be approached by the clans in friendship or for aid. Thane Sun-Hair had paid a visit, been introduced to the elf who had stepped out of time; she was a curious sort of woman, he thought.

He was strong enough, now, to walk around the entire base camp without support and without growing winded. Eight hundred years of not using his limbs had left him weak, but exercise and nourishment were bringing him slowly back to himself. Ellana insisted on walking at his side even after he no longer needed assistance; with a gentle laugh, she told him that while he _could_ walk alone, that didn’t mean he should be _lonely_. They continued to talk as they walked, and she told him of her clan in the forests of a place across the sea called the Free Marches. She told him of Skyhold, the great fortress which was home to the Inquisition, and of the elf called Solas who had guided her there only to disappear after the death of Corypheus. There was a sadness in her voice whenever she mentioned his name, he noticed.

“He was special to you?” he asked finally.

“He was a mage - like you - and very wise - also like you, I think,” she replied. “And he was my friend, or at least I thought he was. But would a friend go away and never let you hear from him again? I know he’s alive. I don’t know how I know it, but I feel it in my mind somehow. But for all my resources, all my contacts, I can find no trace of him anywhere. It’s as if he never existed at all.”

“I remind you of him?”

“In some ways.”

“In some ways you remind me of Telana,” he replied. “Perhaps we are even.”

She shook her head, the chestnut hair rustling. “You love Telana. I feel only friendship for Solas.”

 _But what do you feel for me?_ The question rose unbidden in his mind, and for the first time, he realized, he really wanted to know the answer.

* * *

Professor Kenric took his leave. The students had to return to Orlais, he had a report to make. Scout Harding, too, was preparing to leave; she rarely stayed in one place for long, according to Inquisitor Lavellan, and had made an exception for the sake of the professor. He had relied on her for protection as much as companionship. The dwarf had been amused to provide it.

“And we must return to Skyhold as well,” said Ellana. They sat in his cabin, eating dinner, having bade farewell to Kenric’s party. Most of her companions were already at the fortress, except for those who had left the Inquisition; Ellana was planning to depart with Scout Harding in the morning.

“What will I do?” he asked. It was now five weeks since Ameridan had been brought to the camp, and he was strong enough to be out of bed most of the day.

“That depends on you. You led the First Inquisition; this is the Second,” she reminded him, pushing away her empty bowl. “You’re not bound by duty to remain.”

“Where else would I go?”

“You could stay here if you wished... or you could return to Orlais. Or join one of the clans, or… you have options.” She twisted her fingers together. “Whatever you want to do, we can make it happen.”

“Can you?”

“Most things.”

“Then I want to come with you.” He smiled. For the first time since he ‘awoke,’ he actually felt like he wanted to smile.

“Because I remind you of Telana?” She said it teasingly, but he felt the seriousness beneath the words.

Ameridan shook his head. “Telana waits for me at the Maker’s side. She stayed in this world as long as she could. When she couldn’t be here any longer, she left a little of herself, and it passed to you. I accept that. But I also accept that you are a different person, one who grows more important to me every day.”

“The world has changed since you were last in it,” she said. “Maybe it’s best you don’t face it alone.” A smile curled her lips. “Though I’m not sure it’s quite ready for two Inquisitors.”

Ameridan shook his head. “My days of being the Inquisitor are over. The world looks to you now... and so do I. It’s going to be strange to me, but I like the idea of facing it at your side.”

 _And now I know,_ he thought. _I wondered what else my Telana gave to you without you knowing. The answer, it seems, is me._

 


End file.
